Whatsoever Things Are True
by cascade-up
Summary: Season 6 musings from Cristina and Owen.
1. Brave New World

Chapter 1: Brave New World

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"_I charge thee, fling away ambition. By that sin fell the angels." – Henry VIII_

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I don't want comfort. Leave that to those who are satisfied with complacency. I want challenge. I want real danger. I want the thrill of the feel of a beating heart within my hands. I want freedom. I want goodness. I want sin.

There's a dignity in failure, however painful it may be. At the end of the day I can learn from a mistake – and do better the next. The same can't be said for mediocrity. How do you judge a body of work that's nowhere near noteworthy, yet far too flawless to condemn? Lately, we've all become too cautious. With cancer and bus wrecks, mergers and liver transplants – it's not hard to see why surviving each day intact and employed has been the new hallmark of success. But string together too many of these days and what do you get? Endless hours of "nothing great." Weeks and months of "that was fine."

I put 12 years of higher education to use in trying to maneuver my way into a surgery. It wasn't even a good surgery. We gave an old man an erection. Can you imagine? From cardiothoracics to penile implants – how the mighty have fallen.

Burke's hands were beautiful. They were solid, strong, graceful, and deft. Most importantly, they possessed the ability to heal hearts. So what if, in the end, they were used to break mine? Even still, they cut and stitched a patchwork of armor that defied death and even God himself. Could there be anything more powerful than that? In all honesty I can say that I don't miss the man. But I do miss his hands.

Owen has always been about the team. My brother's success is my success. My failures are his as well. It's the only way to survive the world of trauma surgery. You do whatever part you can to save the most number of lives possible. It calls for speed and inventiveness, but it doesn't call for brilliance. It doesn't demand the arrogance or the ego of a heart surgeon. In this way he can't understand our way of thinking. I don't blame him for that. But Burke's hands would have understood.

The human heart beats 72 times a minute. It amounts to 2.5 billion times in a lifespan. When a patient comes in for a procedure, we stop their heart completely. You stop it so that, when it starts again, it has the chance to reach that 2.5 billion benchmark. Seattle Grace's heartbeat has stopped. And lately, I've lost confidence in the hospital's ability to restart.

There are people who can find satisfaction in family and friends alone. I don't know how they do it. Happiness, for me, exists within the four walls of an operating room. Euphoria emerges from the cracked opening of a chest. Comfort comes from the stitches sewn into a heart. Joy comes from the saving of a life. Love is expressed, not through words, but by work – through the hands. I desperately miss his hands.

It's a brave new world for everyone here at the hospital. I just can't help feeling that it's not the right one for me anymore.


	2. The Sound and the Fury

Chapter 2: The Sound and the Fury

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"_And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge, with Ate by his side come hot from hell, shall in these confines with a monarch's voice cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war." – Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene I_

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_"You've made a start."_

Recovering addicts will tell you that they are never fully cured. Anyone who can claim a cure is lying. Or utterly naïve. In an addict's mind, there's always that hunger for another roll of the die … another shot of whiskey … just one more line of cocaine. It has nothing to do with intelligence, strength, or self-control. It's hard-wired. And until the day we can change our own DNA, there will always be a struggle.

_"Does he talk to you about the war?"_

Alongside rehabilitation comes a lifetime of constant vigilance. Yet how do you wage a fight against an unseen enemy? How do you simultaneously defeat and preserve your own self? It's clear that no battle is ever really won. They aren't even fought. Peel each one back and you reveal to man his own folly and despair. And victory is merely an illusion constructed by philosophers and fools.

_"I know what it is to not want to live – to lose everything."_

Our past misdeeds can never be fully banished. And eternal sunshine of the mind is just a fanciful dream. There are days when the dense fog of the years appears impenetrable. Did you know that when new pilots fly into clouds and try to orient themselves in the haze, they oftentimes mistakenly end up upside-down – without even knowing it. It's easy to get lost. It's even harder to correct your route when the destination is undetermined.

_"I wasn't trying to hurt you. I was trying to save my own life."_

But then comes the breakthrough. In the countless therapy sessions where the same words get used over and over again, maybe just once, a small fragment of the truth gets spoken. And that's all it takes. You worry and fret each and every day, and then one day you simply don't, at least, not in the same way. The chains don't come completely undone, but the links grow longer, and the metal loses its heft. And what was once a burden is now a badge – certainly not one of honor – but neither is it one of shame.

_"You can sleep in the bathtub."_

The familiar taunt rings across every playground: sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. And yet any child can tell you that they do. But the same ones that have the power to destroy also carry the capacity to heal. There's an entire industry devoted to the influence of positive thinking – of improvement through reinforcement. Maybe in the midst of all their writings motivated by profit, they've stumbled upon some small fragment of reality. Words carry power. What's most important, though, is that comfort lies in the act of speaking, much more so than within the words themselves. You will know the truth, and by giving voice to it, the truth shall set you free.

_Sometimes, it can even take your breath away. _


	3. Memento Mori

Chapter 3: Memento Mori

"_To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow." – Macbeth, Act V, Scene V_

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We met each other for the first time in the dwindling days of a New England summer. That particular day in September, cars and boxes were littered across the lawn; crimson banners and balloons were tied to every available surface. Parents reluctantly bid goodbye and roommates cautiously greeted hello. The sun somehow seemed brighter back then, the trees more lush, the grass more green – in the air there was a promise of … possibility. We were so young: we felt too much and knew too little. At the tender age of 17, we were both away from our families for the first time, utterly intimidated and completely awe-struck by the massive brick walls and wrought-iron gates that cocooned us within the comfortable embrace of Harvard Yard.

There are so many days when I wish that I could go back to that first week of college, when we sat around debating unanswerable questions, and dreamed about the great things we would do to change the world. We were still naïve enough to believe in those dreams – so sure were we of our invincibility. That was our age of innocence – in that one, brief week before classes began, before relationships got complicated.

We came as a set. Teddy and Frankie. The two names uttered in a single breath. In that first year, we rarely ventured far without the other one close by. The day before classes began we walked across campus to each lecture hall to make sure that we wouldn't get lost on the first day. We mapped out the table and exact time we would meet for dinner … refusing to bear the shame of sitting alone in the crowded gloom of Annenberg. We developed our own signal system to be used at parties whenever one of us had to be rescued from the overly eager clutches of a freshman boy. She came to Maryland for Thanksgiving. I went to New York for New Year's.

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You learn a lot about a person over the course of four years.

Like how three shots of tequila and for certain the night would be a memorable one – but a fourth means you'll spend it holding her hair back in the nearest bathroom.

Like how Sunday brunch was the only time in the week special enough to merit the use of the waffle iron, or how Wednesday evenings were the only time she'd eat the chocolate frozen yogurt. "Calories don't count on Wednesdays," she'd say.

Like how every exam period she'd invest in a stack full of earplugs, highlighters, and chewing gum … and proceed to litter the couch with post-it notes.

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It's the little things that I remember the most.

Like how she stayed up with me for my first all-nighter, just so I wouldn't feel lonely.

Like how, the morning after I lost my virginity, she giggled and demanded to know every awkward detail. How she passed me the tissues and cried with me after my first breakup.

Like how we'd celebrate the first heavy snowfall of every year by running outside and sledding down the library steps on stolen dining hall trays.

Like how we made a silly schoolgirl pact to be each other's maids of honor, and how we planned to coordinate our pregnancies so that our kids would be the same age. To be fair, that agreement came at the tail end of a three-tequila night.

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We left Cambridge with the certainty that we would one day obtain prestige and wealth, fame and glory. Frankie headed to Wall Street, and I went on to medical school at Columbia. "The first step in conquering the world," she joked, "was to make others believe that you're working for them." And so, with renewed energy, we fully committed to our new lives. And every Sunday we'd meet up for brunch in the city … and order waffles, of course.

In every generation there comes a time when the pied piper comes calling, to serve a cause that's greater than the individual. I heard the call in the early morning hours of a September eight years ago … on the anniversary of the day that Frankie and I had met for the very first time. And so it was on that same day where she and I said goodbye for the final time.

I could have been a renowned surgeon if I had stayed in civilian life. I could have blazed my way through the medical community … been revered as a god in cardiology. So what? My mind kept going back to that idyllic week when we were all together. When for a brief moment we were still invincible.

I signed up for the Army the next morning.

You can call it a stunning act of patriotism. I call it an ordinary act of a friend who can still remember a time when the air was full of possibility, and who is doing everything she can to make it so again.


End file.
